More Hair Volume: Bonding Hair Strands

Once you have created your hair style through reshaping strands or creating a network of strands, you need to hold it in place in order to have long-lasting volume. Hair volume created via wet styling and friction is especially vulnerable to humidity attack and disruption from wind, head shaking, etc. But you can keep your volume with the help of hair styling products. Styling products help keep long-lasting volume by creating reinforcing bonds between hair shafts at critical locations to your style. These bonds come in two types:*

1. Hair seam welds

These are bonds that hold two hair shafts together in side-by-side alignment; by holding these hairs together you increase the stiffness and body of the hair shaft - helping it hold the hair away from the scalp on its own.

2. Hair spot welds

These are found where hairs cross each other to create a support structure; the styling polymer glues the shafts together at this critical structural point.

All hair styling products create both kinds of welds. However, mousse, gel and waxes are preferred for creating seam welds. This is because they are applied in larger quantities and typically rubbed in hand before the finished style is created. Hair spray is preferred for creating spot welds because it is applied through the air in tiny droplets to a finished style and thus can act on critical hair cross-over points.

* John Gray, The World of Hair, A Scientific Companion, McMillan Press, 1997 (New York), 135.